


Rebel girl rebel girl

by gloss



Category: Shoujo Kakumei Utena | Revolutionary Girl Utena
Genre: Canon - Anime, F/F, Getting the Band Back Together, Post-Series, relentlessly mundane, riot grrl, the shadow girls were onto something
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-02
Updated: 2015-05-02
Packaged: 2018-03-26 19:43:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3862372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>When she walks, the revolution's coming/In her kiss, I taste the revolution!</i>
</p><p> </p><p>Life after an eternity of living death is full of surprises.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rebel girl rebel girl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whilst](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whilst/gifts).



> Thanks to Whilst for this prompt: "I love the idea of her being ancient and ageless and mythological when she enters into this relationship with a human girl, and being repeatedly surprised by surprise." I dearly hope this suits.
> 
> Title and summary from Bikini Girl, ["Rebel Girl"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZxxhxjgnC0&feature=youtu.be).

The thing about life after death is that everything seems familiar, but nothing is.

Anthy had known how to move in the world. She was stiff then, brittle, a child's puppet worked up out of chopsticks and rubber bands, but she made it work. No one looked at her too closely, no one came too near, and so the illusion held. (Except Utena, who both got too close and saw nothing, but her blindness was of an entirely different sort.)

Now, however, Anthy didn't know what she was doing. She stumbled, she flailed, she got too tired and fell asleep on the bus and missed her stop.

The world *looked* the same, but she couldn't manage in it. It reared up against her, threw sharp corners, slowed-then-sped-up clocks, and she was just like anyone else, at its mercy.

*

The pick-up had seen better days. The corporate decal on the door -- _We Stay In the Garden_ \-- was faded down to pastel by the sun; the window on the passenger side no longer rolled up, while the driver's window was stuck halfway down.

In the bed, loops of hose and sacks of soil crowded up against rattling leaf-blowers, duct-taped rakes, and one large mower.

Like its single remaining truck, Lilith's Landscaping was long past its heyday. Back then, an all-lesbian crew in matching crop-tops and combat boots was an intriguing novelty. Bored housewives and creepy frat brothers alike booked their services.

Now, there was only Jess left. Her original partners in the Lilith co-op were long gone, one to the tech sector, the other through academia and out to brood-tending in the suburbs. She no longer went to the trouble of hiring only women, let alone queer ones. Most of the young women in the city were, she was convinced, more interested in working indoors, as latte artists, boutique snobs, burlesque innovators.

So there was Jess, a rotating crew of Honduran and Nicaraguan guys, and, finally, Anthy.

She worked hard and got along great with the guys, but Jess couldn't make head or tail of her.

"C'mon, I'll drop you off." Jess got in between Anthy and the truck. 

They were far out in the valley, in one of the new subdivisions that was still mostly raw earth and fluttering yellow surveyor's tape. The three guys were already climbing into the bed of the truck. 

"I take the bus." Anthy squinted at Jess, dark against the afternoon sun.

Jess tugged her cap back, wiped the sweat off her face, and pulled it back in place. "Yeah, know that. But --"

"Come on!" Carlos called to Anthy in Spanish. 

"I'll see you tomorrow," Anthy replied, also in Spanish. In her experience, the ramifying and flourishing of different languages, their spread across space and through time, was similar to watching the tannins spiral out from a tea bag through hot water.

The guys called her _la hindú_ , which, if not strictly accurate, was roughly so. When other people asked where she was from (this seemed to be a favorite question, intrusive as it was), Anthy had taken to saying Iraq, though that brought with it its own complications.

"Let me save you two hours on the damn bus, okay?" Jess shoulder-checked Anthy, urging her up into the cab. Instead, Anthy lost her balance and nearly fell.

"Aw, jeez, sorry --" Jess offered her hand, but Anthy picked herself up.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she said again, this time in English. "Thank you for the offer, but the bus is fine."

Utena said she went overboard with the self-sufficiency schtick. Anthy, however, thought that she still had a ways to go when it came to taking care of herself.

She did not mind the bus in the least. It reminded her of travelling after she left school. She took cabs, rode ferries, navigated damp bus terminals and echoing airports. Until then, she had never had a purpose, something unfulfilled, something to *gain*. Travel would always be thrilling for her. She could not, would not, complain.

Today, however, there was some kind of accident in the city, something huge that snarled traffic outwards for miles, for hours. Anthy dozed in her seat, the day's hard work setting in her bones, knotting her lower back and weighting down her arms. An ache in her thigh twanged; scratches on her palms and forearms from the morning's wrestling match with bottom-heavy seedlings stung.

Whatever the accident was, cell service was down, too. She tried to send the same text to Utena twenty, twenty-five times, before she gave up.

And then she tried again.

She was going to be late. She was running out of time. Though she knew it accomplished nothing to worry, she found she couldn't stop herself. Time was ticking away, escaping her grasp. As it fled, she was helpless, trapped here on the bus with three dollars in her pocket and a phone whose battery was rapidly dwindling.

*

By the time she did reach home, the house was deserted. The dusk stole through the empty rooms, gathering in the corners and crowding the baseboards.

She and Utena shared the house with several friends and acquaintances, some from Utena's fire station, others from the band, others just "from around", as Utena put it. Usually, there was at least *someone* in the living room or banging around upstairs.

She shed her work clothes in the mud room; they were invariably too dirty and stiff with sweat to bring into the house. Anthy fed Nanami the cat and nuked a packet of rice and beans before dragging herself to the shower. The hot water sluiced through the dirt on her limbs, shining tracks that branched apart, then reunited, as the mud swirled around her toes and the drain.

Aches like this, daily and intense, were the opposite of torment. The pain was bounded, temporary -- soon it would fade, and she would still be here, feeling something different. This persistence through sensation was what confused her, exhilarated her, the most about living this life. 

Everything changed. Everything was subject to limits, to ending. It all passed, replaced by something different, which then flickered away in turn. She could ache in the morning, orgasm in the evening, grow hungry and then sated.

Hair still damp, Anthy pulled on a light madras skirt and one of Utena's over-large, washed-to-cashmere-softness t-shirts. She was late enough as it was; dallying over what to wear, how to look, would have been especially pointless.

* 

Wisps of her hair dried as she walked to the gig, curling up like morning fog off water. She was loose, warm, bright-eyed.

At the door, their friend Jamie waved her in past the line-up. Anthy slipped inside, into the close humid dark chockfull of noise and bodies, shouts and riffs and knocking limbs.

She was never going to see very well in the dark, but she knew the layout of the place well enough to slip along the back wall until she found the merchandise table. Pushing a grateful Keegan toward the dance floor, she replaced him, smoothing down the piled shirts and fanned-out CDs.

*Now* she looked toward the stage. She'd been saving this moment, when solitude flipped over, when she blinked and saw Utena where before there was no one.

Up there, Utena owned the tiny space. It formed itself around her, sticky-close and steamy, turned her even more radiant than usual. The muscles in her forearms stood out, carved stark by sweat, on every strum of her pink guitar. Her hair, plastered to her neck, chest, cheek, was soaked, gone dark as rust.

When she sang, her mouth opened wide enough to swallow everyone before her.

Anthy watched, leaning forward on her balled fists. A new ache was starting up, burning between her legs, down the back of her throat, prickling over her nipples.

This was someone Anthy knew better than even herself, whose body she'd mapped with tongue, teeth, tips of fingers, whose heart was more familiar than any old story. And yet, up there, past the crowd, Utena was still able to enthrall. 

Anthy wouldn't have it any other way. 

*

After packing up the van, Anthy and Utena walked home. Utena was still buzzed from the performance and ran ahead, turning cartwheels, then running back to grab both of Anthy's hands and twirl her around in the middle of the street.

They stopped at a taco truck that had set up to serve road crews on the main thoroughfare to downtown.

"What do you want? Let me get it --"

"I've got money," Anthy said, interrupting her, and Utena stuck her tongue out. "I *do*." She placed her order, paid for it, then stepped aside.

They watched construction equipment crawl down the street, orange lights flashing.

"Another spaceship crash!" Utena said around a big bite, one cheek bulging like a squirrel's. "Can you believe it? That's the third this year!"

Anthy plucked off all the cilantro she could find before folding up her taco and taking a bite. "What do you think they want?"

"Who?" Utena swallowed, then shoved the rest of the taco into her mouth. She hopped up backwards onto the low fence.

"The aliens."

"Oh, I dunno. Maybe our Earth women?" Utena reached for her, wiggling her fingers like monster claws. Anthy ducked before leaning into the touch. "They're pretty damn cool, after all."

Snuggling back, she folded Utena's arms up across her chest; Utena copped a quick feel, thumb and palm around the bottom edge of Anthy's breast. She giggled a little at her own forwardness, pleased with herself.

"Yes," Anthy replied, tucking her head against Utena's sweaty neck. "They certainly are."


End file.
